Imam an-Nawawi assembled his collection of forty-two ahadith together with the absolute minimum of fiqh and commentary necessary for people not to misunderstand their import.
Ibn 'Uyaynah said, "Ahadith are misleading except to those who have fiqh." Ibn Wahb said, "Every man of hadith who has no Imam in fiqh is astray." Of the huge number of collections of forty hadith, the one by Imam an-Nawawi is undoubtedly the most famous and most enduring. This is, to our knowledge, that work's first full translation into English and so we have called it The Complete Forty Hadith of Imam an-Nawawi.